When our economy tanked last year, politicians told us that our
nation’s financial institutions were “too big to fail.” Now, as
world leaders prepare for a critically important climate summit in
Copenhagen, we need to ask: “Is Earth too big to fail?”

You know the back story: scientific studies pile up monthly
warnings of a potential collapse of our planet’s human life support
systems. Most recently, researchers calculated that the Arctic
icecap – one of earth’s largest geographic features – could
disappear in 10 summers. That meltdown might unleash global weather
changes that destabilize agriculture in a world where a billion
people already go hungry, thereby threatening food riots and
fanning the fires of global terror.

Meanwhile, UCLA scientists have looked back 20 million years to
find atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as high as today. Global
temperatures then were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher. Sea
levels were 75 to 120 feet deeper. And Antarctica was nearly
ice-free. Clearly, we are reshaping our “planet into something we
have never seen in all of human history,” says climatologist
Jonathan Foley.

Still, a Senate climate bill remains stalled, and its
cap-and-trade mechanisms are seen by many as inadequate to deal
with global warming. What’s needed immediately are fresh ideas that
will break the logjam before Copenhagen. What is needed is a great
and radical compromise that deals decisively and honestly with the
climate change threat, but also allows the fossil fuel industry,
and the rest of the U.S. and world economy, to thrive. Such a
compromise is possible, though its provisions will likely cause
environmentalists and fiscal conservatives to fall out of their
chairs.

Here are four bold measures for breaking the climate
deadlock.

• Put tens of billions into clean-coal. Coal largely powers our
nation. That is current reality. And clean coal is still a fantasy,
but not long ago so was a trip to the moon. Money is the answer. It
is already technologically possible to remove 90 percent of the
carbon from coal emissions. However, according to a July 2009
Harvard study, this thorough carbon-cleansing nearly doubles the
cost of making electricity. So why not offer federal loans to
energy producers to cover the difference? A carbon tax would pay
back that loan. It can be done: Norway is already sequestering
carbon beneath the North Sea, and sequestration sites are being
identified across America. This is no permanent solution, but
triage. It’s a stopgap measure to buy us some time: at a cost
roughly equal to current U.S. corn subsidies, sequestering coal
carbon emissions underground would give us a few decades to
transition into a renewable-energy world, and give coal companies
time to transform into 21st century energy companies.

• Repurpose petroleum. Oil isn’t renewable. Every barrel we burn
for energy is wasted. It’s like burning money. Rather, let’s
transition from using oil as fuel and turn it into high-quality
plastics and other durable goods. Let’s fund research into
next-generation plastics and other petrochemically-based materials
designed for reuse in an endless loop – rather than being
discarded. Already, scientists at the University of Washington are
using petroleum-based plastics to make solar cells; other
researchers are using them in high-quality building materials.
Following the “cradle to cradle” ideas of architect William
McDonough, manufacturers are inventing ways to design shoes, cars –
even factories – to be dismantled and reused. Such change could
take decades, but an infusion of investment will quicken it.

• Institute a global Marshall Plan. Current economic and climate
realities dictate that we bail out the developing world. Unless we
bring the poor out of poverty through clean energy, all of the
developed world’s carbon emission reduction efforts will go for
naught. Exporting sustainable-energy technologies to the developing
world will help end poverty and dramatically boost our economy.
When the U.S. rebuilt Europe and Japan after World War II, skeptics
called it economic suicide. Today the U.S.-European-Japanese
trading partnership is the strongest, freest economic engine the
world has known. Likewise, investment in Africa today will create
thriving free markets there tomorrow.

• Adapt now. No matter how successfully we implement the first
three steps, too much greenhouse gas is already aloft. We must
prepare for some climate-caused upheaval. Intensive cooperative
public-private planning is needed to anticipate the extreme
weather, sea rise, wildfire, insect, disease and other damage done
by climate change.

These proposals will likely anger many. But sticking with the
current crop of platitudes is getting us no closer to a solution.
And we’ve run out of time. Hear this recent warning from U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: “Our foot is stuck on the
accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss.” We are speeding
headlong into climate chaos.

A change in approach must come now – before Copenhagen.
Impossible? Not in the America we know.

Glenn Scherer and David Lillard are the editors of Blue
Ridge Press, a syndicated commentary service about the
environment.